Supply chain integration platform Chain.io raised $5M and has plans to hire

Chain.io, the 2016-founded maker of a cloud-based supply chain integration platform that helps computers communicate, recently raised a $5 million round of fundraising, the company said Friday.

The round, led by Grand Ventures and Mercury with participation from Honeywell Ventures and Engage, comes after the company tripled its revenue base in 2020, and increased its customer count by more than 50%, its leadership said.

“We solve a problem that people hate to deal with: getting computers to talk to each other well between companies,” Brian Glick, a 20-year veteran of the logistics industry told us in 2018. “When you start a company that does what people hate to do, they flock to your door.”

Currently, Chain.io’s integration network processes more than 100 million data transformations a month — including data from 10 out of the largest freight forwarders in the world — and has doubled in size over the last year, per the company.

“As we’ve all seen over the past year, supply chains are core to both our individual lives and the global economy,” said Tim Streit, cofounder and managing partner of Grand Ventures, in a statement. “When we met the Chain.io team we quickly understood that they’ve built a network that will transform the industry from the inside out.”

And this growth for the company comes with plans to hire. A spokesperson said the company is currently at 16 employees, with plans to get to about 40 in roles across sales, engineering, customer success and other teams. The company also recently hired Ryan Amaya, formerly at Weblinc and Odessa, to run people operations.

When the company launched five years ago, it worked out of a handful of coworking spaces before relocating its HQ to 1518 Walnut St. in 2018. But you’ll still find the company’s address listed at Indy Hall’s 399 Market St. address, as Glick says its N3rd Street roots are important to its culture.

The $5 million VC raise will go toward expanding the network and to “help our customers develop their digital nervous systems throughout their extended supply chain,” Glick said.

Check out open roles, including a few in software engineering, on Chain.io’s website.